Investing.com– Chinese officials are considering a potential sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations to Elon Musk, if the social media giant is unable to duck a controversial ban being proposed by U.S. authorities, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
The report said that while Chinese officials preferred that TikTok remained under parent ByteDance Ltd, they were already discussing potential contingencies, including the sale to Musk.
ByteDance contested the ban in the U.S. Supreme Court. But recent discussions showed that U.S. judges were also likely to uphold any potential ban on the short video platform.
Speculation over a TikTok ban grew as the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump drew near, especially given that Trump has promised to adopt an even stricter stance against Beijing.
The Supreme Court gave ByteDance a January 19 deadline to either sell TikTok or face a potential U.S. ban on the grounds of national security.
TikTok is used by roughly half of the U.S. population- around 170 million users. Lawmakers had raised concerns that the platform was collecting U.S. user data and was undermining national security, with Congress voting in favor of the ban last year.
A TikTok ban bodes well for other U.S. social media platforms such as Meta Platforms’ (NASDAQ:META) Instagram and Alphabet Inc’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) YouTube, both of which had rolled out their own short video platforms amid heightened competition from TikTok.
A sale of the social media platform to Musk could bring it closer in line with Musk’s treatment of Twitter, which the Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO bought in 2023 and rebranded as “X.”